The Buzz:
Edmonton Oilers turned the tables on the Vancouver Canucks as goaltender Mathieu Garon made 29 saves and held the home team scoreless through overtime. Then Ales Hemsky beat Roberto Luongo to win the shootout.

The Spoil:
Edmonton played a tight defensive game to stop the Canucksâ€™ winning streak at three games. Vancouver won the previous two meetings by a 9-3 margin and hadnâ€™t lost to Edmonton since Dec. 4, 2006. The Canucks are a dismal 2-7 at home.

Save of the Game:
Roberto Luongo had to stretch to keep the puck out on Andrew Coglianoâ€™s shot halfway through overtime.

Phew:
Raffi â€œI Didnâ€™t Sing Baby Belugaâ€ Torres was almost the goat of the game when he let the puck slip away before he could register a shot during his shootout chance.

Turning Point:
After dominating the first two periods, the Canucks were outshot 9-4 in the third.

Sign of the Times:
The ever-creative GM Place audience brought the usual â€œOilers suck!â€ chant. Next time, may we suggest: â€œYouâ€™ve gotta mallâ€¦ youâ€™ve gotta mallâ€¦ and thatâ€™s all!â€ or â€œNice elbow patches!â€ or â€œEskimos? Hahahaha!â€

Crunch Time:
Mattias Ohlund registered the hit of the game on Robert â€œSon of Kentâ€ Nilsson in the Vancouver zone in the sixth minute of the second period.

X-File:
Both the Oilers and Canucks have a Finnish defenseman on the injured reserve list. Turku-native Sami Salo for Vancouver and Oulu-born Joni Pitkanen for Edmonton.
Oulu is home of the Air Guitar World Championships while Turkuâ€™s most famous son is nine-time Olympic gold medalist Paavo Nurmi.

showtyme21 wrote:TSN was saying that on the NHL.com website, it was 1-0 halfway through the third with Horcoff scoring the goal... Just thought that was an interesting tidbit. Even the NHL hates the Canucks.

I think one of the worldwide conspiracy theories.

I was at NHL.com while listening on radio and i didn't noticed it...

I was surprised too with Ritchie being the first shooter, at least his attempt was better than Raffi Torres'.

Better team and goalie won tonight...

Please enlight us which of the 4 other games tonight you're speaking of.

The Canucks are a dismal 2-7 at home.

To be honest to the Canucks it's 2-6-1 but not very satisfying, right.

2-7, including a tiebreaker loss or 2-6-1.
Of course, in the "new" NHL, both goalies were credited with a shutout but the scorer of the tiebreaking goal doesn't get credit.
If the NHL wants to be like soccer, then it should record the score as 0-0 after overtime with Edmonton winning the shootout 1-0.
But what does Gary Bettman care about the integrity of the game?

Hey all, I've been lurking for a while but I just wanted to mention a couple of things:
1. BMo is on pace for over 30 goals, a career high, conveniently in a contract year.
2. I hate Pierre McGuire sometimes. Hey said something along the lines of "Garon didn't work out in MTL, Garon didn't work out in LA, but he sure is working out in EDM!!!!!!" I don't think his record is spectacular this year nor do I believe it was horrible (I'm talking Skudra horrible) in MTL and LA.
Total NHL GP 144 W63 L58 T12 2.87 .903
EDM GP6 w3 l2 t0 2.92 .898
Not exactly stellar to me....

The good...
Great pace and flow, few whistles, few penalties
I liked the refs last night. (They're probably in Bettman's bad books now)
If we had won the game it would have gone down as a classic.
Willie would have earned a star for his goal-line save.

The bad...
We changed our attack to the periphery again and went back to the dump'n'chase as our default tactic at the blue line.

Yes, we had lots of shots and a few excellent chances but, for the most part, we were shooting from the side, giving a good goalie a small net to defend.
Despite the good flow, our forwards seemed a bit sleepy, the passes weren't crisp, reaction to loose pucks a bit slow, the down low attack wasn't using our point men well enough (or maybe our point men weren't pinching well enough, it's hard to tell.
We played well defensively but we are still missing something on offence.

I thought our offensive success in the last three games was, in part, due to our keeping posession across the blue line, attacking up the middle and crashing the net for rebounds in the scrum.
I was surprised we didn't keep that strategy against a team with defensive injuries.
Was the Edmonton defence really that good last night?

But...other than the final score, it was still an entertaining game to watch.

Hopefully the win will inspire Edmonton to play lights out against the Wild tonight leaving a husk for us to face Friday.

We dominated the first two period because we came out playing PHYSICAL hockey. Ohlund, Pyatt, Ritchie, and Isbister (the big kids) really set the tone by sitting some Oil on their asses. That's what we need to do night-in and night-out because we're not skilled offensively to set up those pretty plays - despite Dan Sedin and Kesler's neat little dekes. Too bad they couldn't put it in.

Somehow in the third period we kind of got away from that, started to play 'safe hockey' again. The result? Outplayed (again) in the third and a loss in the shootout.